ensemble dal niente performs a broad range of 20th- and 21st- century music. Through concerts, commissions and educational activities, we explore the wealth and diversity of music composed in the past century — from the European avant-garde, to American high modernism, to styles influenced by popular music and jazz.

dal niente was founded by composer Kirsten Broberg in 2004 at Northwestern University and has become one of the Midwest’s leading new music organizations. We believe that we live in a unique and inspiring musical era and we are committed to fostering a positive, vital creative interchange.  We present the best of music being written today by established, emerging, and as-yet-undiscovered composers. We commission new works,  give countless premieres, and champion great but neglected compositions — all in addition to regularly performing contemporary and 20th-century masterpieces to bring this truly exceptional music to enthusiastic audiences.

dal niente understands that an essential part of a vibrant and sustainable music community is the education of young composers and performers. Partnered with local high schools, we perform music of teenage composers and guide their musical development.  We hold residencies and conduct masterclasses at colleges and universities across the Midwest.

The ensemble is comprised of young artists and international virtuosos who bring this challenging repertoire to life with enthusiasm and devotion.  We include in our ranks faculty from DePaul University and the University of Chicago; conducting staff and members of the Civic Orchestra of Chicago; former participants in the Lucerne Festival and International Ensemble Moderne Academies; and past fellows of the Aspen Festival Contemporary Music Ensemble.

Suzanne Fiol, May 9, 1960 – October 5, 2009

Dear friends,

It is with great heartbreak and sorrow that ISSUE Project Room announces the passing of our founder, artistic director, and driving force, Suzanne Fiol. Born on May 9, 1960, Suzanne died at 1:05 pm on Monday, October 5, 2009, after fighting a courageous and inspiring battle against cancer. Suzanne passed peacefully surrounded by loved ones at New York Presbyterian Hospital. Our hearts go out to her daughter Sarah, her sister Nancy, and her parents Lawrence and Arlene Perlstein and her partner Anthony Coleman.

Anyone who has met Suzanne knows that she devoted her life to creating and sustaining a space where artists — acclaimed and emerging, local and international — could develop and perform new, challenging, and exciting works. Regardless of the different venues we’ve inhabited since our inception in 2003, ISSUE has always been Suzanne’s labor of love, a space that housed and reflected her restless intellect, fiery spirit, and great heart. She would often jokingly refer to herself as “Mama Issue,” a fitting moniker considering the unconditional love she unabashedly showed her friends, family, artists and the steadily growing audiences that have been coming to ISSUE over the years.

We are grief-stricken by Suzanne’s passing, yet inspired by her vision and strength, and will devote ourselves to fulfilling her vision with the strength we draw from our memories of her. Programming will continue this week in honor of Suzanne, and we welcome you all to come to ISSUE and share your memories.

A memorial is currently being planned.
Please stay tuned for information on its time, date and location.

(photos by Joe Holmes)

07/12/2009 02:37 PM

An Avant-Garde Arts Group Bites Off a Lot to Chew

When it comes to the avant-garde side of the arts, the numbers tend to be pretty small. Record sales of a thousand or two, if you’re lucky; theater audiences in the dozens, not hundreds.

But last year Issue Project Room, a nonprofit arts space that was founded in the East Village and for the last four years has been in Brooklyn, was dealt a dauntingly large number. As part of a city deal, a developer that was converting the former Board of Education building in downtown Brooklyn into condominiums was required to offer 5,000 square feet on its ground floor to a cultural group on a 20-year, rent-free lease.

Issue Project Room won the bid. (Yes!) But then found that the space needed $2.5 million in renovations. (No!)

The organization’s leaders managed to raise about $350,000 but finally were able to exhale when Marty Markowitz, the Brooklyn borough president, called late last month with the news that he was allocating $1.1 million for Issue Project Room’s renovations, as part of the $37.7 million in capital funds that he has the authority to distribute for the current fiscal year.

The building, at 110 Livingston Street, was designed by McKim, Mead & White and opened in 1926 as a home for the Elks club. By 1940 the Board of Education had taken it over, and the city sold it six years ago to the Brooklyn developer Two Trees Management for more than $45 million.

With Issue Project Room, whose proposal to Two Trees won over those from more than 100 other organizations, the building will become a home for all kinds of experimental music, theater, dance, literary readings and film. “A Carnegie Hall for the avant-garde,” Suzanne Fiol, the group’s founder and creative director, said.

“I truly believe that this is the work that keeps our culture going forward,” Ms. Fiol said. “We want to be an important space for music and film and literature and poetry and video and sound art. And a little bit of dance.”

Most of the space is a wide, marble-lined room somewhere between a courtroom and a dance hall, said Sarah Garvey, an Issue Project Room spokeswoman. In addition, there is room for offices and an additional space that could be used for a library.

Ms. Fiol opened the first Issue Project Room in 2003 in a former garage on Sixth Street in the East Village and two years later moved to a former oil silo on the Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn, where she put on shows like an extremely rare visit by the reclusive Texas musician Jandek.

In 2007 Issue Project Room had to move again, to the former Old American Can Factory, nearby in Carroll Gardens. This month that space has its Floating Points Festival, with experimental musicians like Alan Licht and Tony Conrad (who is an Issue Project Room board member) making use of a custom-built hemispherical speaker system that hangs from the ceiling.

Whether the idea of a big, official institution like Carnegie Hall is antithetical to the spirit of the avant-garde is an open question. But with Manhattan rapidly losing performance spaces devoted to experimental arts — like Tonic on the Lower East Side, which closed in 2007 — some kind of home is necessary, and Mr. Markowitz believes that Brooklyn is the perfect place for it.

“Issue Project Room is well respected, avant-garde, cutting-edge, in-your-face — you know what? That’s Brooklyn too,” Mr. Markowitz said. “I don’t understand half the things they do, and when they tell me about them, they lose me. But that’s not the point.” The point, he added, was that “the arts create jobs.”

His contribution brings the renovation budget to within about $300,000 of what it needs for the nuts-and-bolts first phase.

Ms. Fiol said she was at first reluctant to apply for the new space because at the time her organization had no money. But having three homes in six years taught her to keep an open mind.

“Everybody gets kicked out of their space, or they end up shutting down,” Ms. Fiol said. “But instead of getting all flipped out about that, I took the road of just finding a new space. And I’ve been really lucky.”